3.45pm WST – It seems asylum seekers have been found on shore at Christmas Island. The Shire President (Gordon Thompson) is reporting that the vessel sank on Monday, that there are around 30 people involved and that, as yet, there are no reports of deaths.

I have just seen a tweet from Oliver Laughland of the Guardian Australia that “Those on board have been living on a remote beach for the past 3 days. 8/9 were found by police wondering up a main road on CI earlier today”

The West Australian is reporting that, “A group of Burmese asylum seekers appears to have arrived on Christmas Island undetected. Christmas Island residents said a group of asylum seekers had been been discovered wandering on a remote road on the eastern part of the island this afternoon. They claimed to have arrived on the island on Moday when their boat came ashore at the remote Dolly Beach. Another larger group had remained behind at the beach while others went for help. They said there had been no fatalities.“

Later in that same report was the following wich seems to indicate a second vessel!

A man identified as Chris said he had heard a boatload of Sri Lankan asylum seekers had run aground on Greta Beach. “Apparently their boat has wrecked,” he told Macquarie Radio. “The Navy have raced over there. I heard the situation was quite bad.” He said the beach was small and surrounded by extremely high cliffs. It’s believed the boat arrived about 11am.”

Different beach – three days or a few hours? One boat or Two?

UPDATE

Herr ÜberGrossenFührer Morrison has broken his “no information” rule and announced that there has been an incident on the South East Coast of Christmas Island. To me that sounds like a sinking or a boat which has run aground on the rocks.The same thing happened in December 2010. Surely, with the increased and much touted surveillance our new “Border Protection” has brought to the area, no Asylum Seeker vessel could make it that close to the Island without being spotted! There is some incompetence shown here and I do hope it has not cost any lives.

Sue and I had been watching a sudden flurry of movement by HMAS Larrakia and an unknown vessel up and down the East Coast of Christmas Island and wondering at the reason. We suspected an unexpected arrival but did not dream that the Minister would be telling us so quickly.

Further updates will be made as available.

This Morning

Yahoo Australian News is reporting that “Another asylum vessel has arrived on Christmas Island – the third to make it to Australia since Indonesia said it would end all cooperation on people smuggling. Officials on Christmas Island say a vessel carrying about 60 people was intercepted last night. The passengers have been transferred at sea to a larger border protection vessel.” (Thanks Sue)

The “larger Border Protection Vessel” is probably ACV Ocean Protector which explains why she has hidden herself from the Live Marine Traffic sites. The question is, “Will these people be landed before 9am EST tomorrow so that they can be included in tomorrow’s press conference”?

Reports are that there are still around ten boats out there heading towards Christmas Island.

FURTHER UPDATE:

3.45pm WST – It seems asylum seekers have been found on shore at Christmas Island. The Shire President (Gordon Thompson) is reporting that the vessel sank on Monday, that there are around 30 people involved and that, as yet, there are no reports of deaths.

I have just seen a tweet from Oliver Laughland of the Guardian Australia that “Those on board have been living on a remote beach for the past 3 days. 8/9 were found by police…

I have been thinking of this report and thinking of how quickly this was all silenced. I am thinking of those who are suffering such horrors still and anew. With much love and determination to fight for you. Janet

Manus Island detainees ‘raped and abused’ with full knowledge of staff

Whistleblower who worked at Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea says it is not fit to ‘serve as a dog kennel’

Detainees on Manus island have been raped and abused with the full knowledge of staff, a former senior guard at the Australian processing centre has claimed.

Speaking to SBS’s dateline on Tuesday, the whistleblower alleged that repeated incidents of rape and assault occurred on the PNG regional processing centre and condemned the facilities as not even fit to “serve as a dog kennel”.

Rod St George, the former G4S security senior manager on the island, claimed that assault victims were knowingly left in the same compound as their abusers as there are not adequate facilities to separate them.

“There was nothing that could be done for these young men who were considered vulnerable, which in many cases is just a euphemism for men who have been raped,” he said.

Adding: “We might separate people in those circumstances on the mainland, but there aren’t any facilities at Manus to do that, so these people who have been assaulted are forced to remain back in the tent.”

The whistleblower also said that self harm and suicide attempts on the island were “very common – almost daily” . He said: “I’ve never seen human beings so destitute, so helpless and so hopeless before. I took the position with every intent of making the place a safer environment, but it proved quite rapidly to be an impossibility. In Australia the facility couldn’t even serve as a dog kennel. The owners would be jailed.”

He also claimed that a number of detainees had intimidated others into self-harming, and said that one detainee had been left injured after others had been “pouring solvents in his ear for some time”.

The immigration minister Tony Burke confirmed on Wednesday morning that despite St George’s allegations the government still plans to transfer asylum seekers to Manus under its draconian new “PNG solution” within a few weeks.

Burke, who is travelling to offshore detention facilities at Manus and Nauru on Wednesday, said he had had a “direct conversation” with the whistleblower and was starting to “work through these issues”.

Speaking on ABC radio, Burke described the allegations as “horrific”. He said that during his conversation with St George the whistleblower had made specific allegations, including that it was impossible to separate detainees if abuse allegations were made. He said he would be examining them directly.

He added: “He [St George] thought some of that may have actually been addressed since he left, but not sure whether it’s been done to the full extent possible. I’ll be in Manus for the next couple of days, and I’ll have a look for myself.”

The news comes as another boat carrying asylum seekers bound for Christmas Island sunk off the coast of Java on Tuesday night. The Australian Maritime Authority has said there were up to 100 people on board. Three deaths have been reported. The Indonesian search and rescue agency are mounting an operation in response.

Asked to comment on the allegations made by the whistleblower, a spokesman for Diac said: “The department takes all allegations of this nature seriously, and has initiated a process to obtain the full and specific details made Mr St George, so we can investigate his claims.”

The spokesman continued: “The department is unaware of the claims on SBS dateline of “unreported acts of self harm” which are alleged to be “off the scale”. Suicide attempts or incidents of self harm at the centre and any allegation of misconduct is taken seriously, and we encourage anybody with information about these allegations or other allegations to contact the department so we can investigate.”

He said that the department was aware of one allegation of sexual assault in the Manus processing centre, but said the detainee did not press charges when interviewed by the PNG police. He said the department had seen no allegations of rape in the processing centre.

“Rape is a criminal offence in PNG. Any claim will be reported to police for investigation – transferees are encouraged to report personal safety concerns immediately,” he said.

Hello peoples – this article written by Nick Olle is comprehensive in terms of understanding the actualities of so called ‘advanced screenings’ and the lived and terrifying effects on people seeking safety. The so called ‘authorities’ are not only secretive or silent about what they are doing to asylum seekers but are using speed to circumvent any assistance or advocacy that may be possible for those being ‘screened’! This too amounts to what i see as war crimes by the Australian government against a number of groups of people fleeing persecution – including Tamils, Iranian and Vietnamese peoples. Note too that Morrisson has announced that anyone arriving from Sri Lanka seeking refuge will be immediately deported…. Janet

Operation Enhanced Screenings – Nick Olle

Interrogated without a lawyer and sent back en masse to the country they risked their lives to flee — Australia is expanding its controversial fast-track “enhanced screening process”.

As many as 30 unaccompanied Vietnamese men were deported from Perth this week – most of them after only a single interview with two immigration officials, without a lawyer present.

The move signals that Australia’s controversial “enhanced screening process” – previously known to be applied to Sri Lankan asylum seekers – is now being broadened to include Vietnamese.

Most Vietnamese nationals held in Australian immigration detention are seeking asylum on the basis of religious or political persecution; they cite abuses against Catholics and dissidents in their homeland, a single-party Communist state.

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection has confirmed to refugee advocates names of at least 20 deportees. Some of the men were transferred from detention in Darwin to Western Australia’s Yongah Hill detention centre immediately before the removal process began.

At least some of those deported had also been interviewed two months ago, with the permission of the Australian government, by Vietnamese officers from Section A18 of the Ministry of Public Security. Officially, the A18 is Vietnam’s Office of Controlling Exit and Entry, but it is widely known as a secret police force that also monitors and disciplines Vietnamese citizens.

On Wednesday, an advocate contacted to confirm the reports told The Global Mail:

“It seems they were bussed out of [Yongah Hill] last night and don’t know what happened next, but can only imagine they are back in [Vietnam] by now. People are in shock. I have various reports of 20 or 25 or 30 or 40, don’t know. Some say they were mainly people who were exposed to the [Vietnamese] police and signed something with them. They were coerced into signing things they didn’t understand – it is just bad news.

“[The immigration department] has only acknowledged receiving lawyer/advocate requests to talk to them before their deportation, but no actual news of what happened to them, and no contact was made.

“The closest equivalent in the criminal justice system would be if a police officer conducted the initial police interview of a suspect without a lawyer present, decided that the suspect was guilty and so dispensed with the courts …”

− Rachel Ball, HRLC

“Very wishful thinking is that they could be on [Christmas Island] but I think I am deceiving myself with this small chance of hope. So they were given no notice at all, and were not allowed to call or talk to anyone once they were locked in the room. Information blackout for them and us.”

Around the time of the A18 interviews at the detention centre, one Vietnamese detainee tried to hang himself and another five successfully escaped, though they were later recaptured.

All of the unaccompanied Vietnamese men deported this week had signed protection-request forms, asking to be represented by the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre (RILC), according to asylum-seeker advocates.

Under the “enhanced screening process”, introduced a year ago by the Labor government, two officials from Australia’s immigration department conduct an initial interview with asylum seekers – who may not be informed of their legal rights – and, on the basis of that interview, decide whether they are eligible to make a claim for refugee status. If the answer is no, they are scheduled for deportation.

Rachel Ball, Director of Advocacy and Campaigns at the Human Rights Law Centre said: “The closest equivalent in the criminal justice system would be if a police officer conducted the initial police interview of a suspect without a lawyer present, decided that the suspect was guilty and so dispensed with the courts, judges, juries, rules of evidence and appeals mechanisms and just sent the accused to prison.”

More than 1,000 Sri Lankans have already been deported under this process, according to a critical Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) report released on October 22. The report raises several concerns with the enhanced screening process, including its failure to offer detainees legal representation or other normal safeguards, such as a written record of the reasons for the decision, and the fact that the screening interviews, “may be brief and not sufficiently detailed or probing to ensure that all relevant protection claims are raised”.

The UNHCR has labelled the enhanced screening process “unfair and unreliable”.

Shayla Strapps, CEO and principal solicitor of the Perth-based organisation CASE For Refugees, told The Global Mail: “I’m not sure what label government is putting on this process. Enhanced screening was essentially brought in for Sri Lankans. They [the government] just say they are trying to move those with no claim offshore quickly.”

Strapps adds, “Our concern is in relation to those who have been screened out – with no access to lawyers, there is a serious risk of refoulement.” Under the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which Australia has signed, “No Contracting State shall expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”

The RILC frequently intervenes on behalf of screened-out asylum seekers who it deems have a legitimate case for protection. The Global Mail has spoken to one Vietnamese family in a Darwin immigration facility, who were saved from imminent deportation thanks to the intervention of the centre, following initial intervention by advocacy groups.

“They [immigration] did it on a weekend and they didn’t have request forms signed so we didn’t have time to get to them.”

− Nam Pham, Vietnamese community leader

Perth-based Vietnamese community leader Nam Pham calls advocates’ work with asylum seekers “a race against time”. He cites the example of two brothers recently deported from Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Centre: “They [immigration] did it on a weekend and they didn’t have request forms signed so we didn’t have time to get to them.”

Pham is in intermittent contact with one of the brothers back in Vietnam, who he says is being harassed and “consistently asked to go and see the police”.

And those left behind in detention – even those who’ve been “screened in” for further consideration of their asylum claim – are “scared and panicked”, Pham says.

“They think they could be next [to be deported].”

Another source reported on Thursday that the deportees had arrived at Ho Chi Minh Airport. In Yongah Hill detention centre, detainees have heard there may be weekly removals to Vietnam.

The office of the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Scott Morrison has not replied to requests for comment from The Global Mail.

In his October 18 briefing, Morrison referred to enhanced screening of Sri Lankans who had arrived by boat as a success, saying that “Under Operation Sovereign Borders we are taking a much stronger position on these issues, we are not dealing in half measures under protest.

“I have instructed the Department to enforce the screen out procedure policy on all Sri Lankan arrivals regardless of their pathway to Australia,” Morrison said.

The following is taken from gordonthomsonci twitter : copied 6.20pm 23rd October 2013 by me. note that the times are and dates are in blue alongside his twitter account details. thank you to gordon thomson keeping us updated from Christmas Island – where he lives. Reading down this page you are reading most recent messages at the top….